Poll Brown of Dirtbag Challenge fame lives right around the corner from the pallet guy so I stopped in. No one was home but his two headed chopper.
Someone needed a bunch of pallets hauled away. That was easy. But where do I dump them? All earthly possessions can be divided into one of three categories: things people will buy from you, things people will take if you tell them it’s free, and things you can’t give away and end up paying to dump.
Being a professional junk man – not just a guy with a truck – means you have to know a lot of markets. As we’ve seen recently, markets rise and fall, so you also have to pay attention to the fluctuations. Last I heard, pallets were selling for 3 bucks a pop but only if they’re oak. I had a mixed load of oak and plywood pallets, so how do I name a price for my client? I might not be able to get rid of the plywood skids and then what? I pay to dump them. Not a pro move at all.
What I do is tell my client, “Look.” I start with “Look” because it means, “Look me in the eye. I’m about to be very honest with you.” It also has an air of pompous authority to it as well, and when you’re a junkman, you can get away with that. So I say “Look Marco, I might be able to sell these pallets for three bucks each. But I can’t be sure. So I’m gonna see where they end up, then I’ll tell you how much it’s gonna cost.”
If you’re client doesn’t know you, they might get nervous. Maybe you’re gonna rip ‘em off. So let em know the score.
“I’m not gonna rip you off. If I can sell them, you don’t have to pay to dump them. It works out for both of us.”
Build a sense of camaraderie in this adventure. You’re a junk man. You’re a pro junk man. Marco had no idea someone would buy used pallets. But he’s running a business. He doesn’t want to spend two hours hauling pallets across town for thirty bucks. Don’t hide the facts, they won’t hurt you.
Then again, there’s plenty of times when you’re behooved to just keep your mouth shut. I’ve behooved myself into hundreds of pounds of copper, antique paintings, old jazz records, you look around the flea market and I’ve been behooved with all that kind of stuff. Because someone didn’t know the markets and I kept my mouth shut.
A professional junk man is the last man to pass judgment on inanimate objects before they meet their maker in the landfill. I am a God of castaways. Without devolving too far, heaven is akin to living forever, like a fine diamond necklace. Every generation is told of its value and no one throws it out. Staying out of the landfill is salvation. The necklace has been saved. The landfill is Hell. The junkman is God. I cast things into the bowels of the earth.
Remember the three categories of possessions we discussed earlier? Let’s focus in on things people will pay for. I don’t care if we’re talking about poker chips or pallets, different ones fetch a different price. I already tipped my hand when I explained oak pallets are worth three bucks. At the buyback center I learned a qualifying truth: only 40 by 48 inch square pallets are worth three bucks each. And as of last month, they are only worth $1.50. It’s a volatile time in the industry. The gentleman at the pallet building warehouse paid me six dollars for the few pallets I had that met the requirements. He took for free the odd sized wooden ones. Then he shook his head sadly at me when I asked about the plywood jobs. He could not take them from me, not even for free.
Notice the writing on that pallet. It is stamped “Quikcrete” and says, “$14.00 deposit on return”. However, this man I am doing business with will not pay it. He was a generalist. I would have to take this pallet to a pallet specialist in order to get that high value. But there was no time. I did not know where the specialist was. Not even Google knew. I didn’t have space to store it until Antiques Roadshow came around with answers. So I gave it away for free.
This afternoon was a condensed lesson in buying and selling. Give me one hundred baseball cards and there will be one that is worth more alone than all the rest combined. As a junkman, I must know that baseball cards in general have a value and I can spare them from the hell of landfill. But I’ll never get rich with a modern day Mickey Mantle because I am a dilettante of detritus. I can’t know all markets, I just know they are out there. I get it for free and sell it cheap. But who needs riches when you have the glory of god?
